Abstract:
In today’s rapidly evolving media ecosystem, two important narratives emerge: the demise of print publishing and the rise of the Millennial generation—the digital natives—as media consumers. In the midst of the persistent discussion that print journalism is dying in this era of digital revolution, data and literature suggest that many magazines are thriving, particularly with Millennials. This discovery, while noteworthy given its direct contradiction to the popular belief that Millennials have forsaken traditional media, is where knowledge pertaining to this phenomenon is prematurely truncated. This study seeks to contribute to a greater understanding of the motivations behind these quantitative conclusions by giving voice to Millennials’ reasons for continued magazine consumption in a way that the available data from closed-response surveys and questionnaires has not. Through a mixed-methods study grounded in uses and gratifications theory, utilizing a preliminary survey and subsequently concentrating on a qualitative design built around focus groups with Millennials (ages 18-25), this work seeks to reveal how this instrumental demographic—the industry’s audience for the years to come and the population whose lives have been most immersed in digital technologies—feels about magazines. Participants reported reading magazines for reasons that pertain to content, aesthetics, entertainment, escape, habit, and ease of use. Findings revealed three instrumental themes: (1) although participants admit that “everything is going digital,” they still overwhelmingly prefer print magazines; (2) while print remains their magazine media preference, they will consume digital content when it infiltrates their daily lives; and (3) despite their strong feelings for print magazines, they think print magazines could cease to exist at the hands of the generation that follows them—Generation Z. Participants feel they are the “in-between” generation, and Generation Z is the one most likely to force future media into the realm of digital-only. The future of print is one of the most pivotal points of discussion trending across the publishing industry today. These digital natives will inevitably dictate the course of the industry through their collective consumer behavior in the coming years. Therefore, the motivations behind their use of such media are of more importance than ever.
